Then Lucy put her hand into Sir Thomas’s hand, which was no longer held out for it. “If you think it is the best,” she said, very low, in her serious voice, “you have more sense than I have. Tell me what to do. Do you think it is the best?”
Sir Thomas had been confused by the strange and unexpected position; he had been prepared for an easy triumph, and at the moment of coming it had eluded him; and when he had almost made up his mind to the reverse, here was another surprise and change. But Lucy’s voice again touched a deeper chord than he was conscious of. He was affected beyond description by the trust she placed in him. He took the hand she gave him within his own. “Lucy!” he cried, with a thrill of passionate feeling in his voice, “as God shall judge between us, I believe it is the best; but not, my dear, unless you feel that it will be happy for you.”
“Oh!” cried Lucy, with a soft breath of ease and content which scarcely seemed to form words, yet shaped into them, “happy! but it was not that I was thinking of,” she said.
He drew her hand within his arm. It was triumph after all, but of a kind original, surprising, with a novelty in it that went to his heart, touching all that was tender in him. He led her down-stairs into Mrs. Ford’s parlor, with his mind in a confusion of sympathy and respect and pleasure, and carved her partridge for her, and eat half of it with a sacramental solemnity, and a laugh in his eyes, which were glistening and dewy. “You see,” he said, addressing the mistress of the house, who looked on somewhat grimly, “it is not because I am greedy, but because she will not eat without company. She wants company. She does not care for the good things you get for her, unless you will share them too.”
“I declare!” cried Mrs. Ford, “I never thought of that before. Lucy, is it true?”
“It is quite true,” said Sir Thomas gravely, with always the laugh in his eyes. “She cares for nothing unless she can share it. Has she eaten up her half honestly? You see I know how to manage her. Will you let me marry her, Mrs. Ford?”
“Sir Thomas!” cried the pair in consternation, in one voice. He had come so opportunely to their assistance that they had quite forgotten he was a wolf in the fold. Ford thrust up his spectacles off his forehead, and let the evening paper (which had come in Sir Thomas’s pocket) drop from his hands, and as for Mrs. Ford she gasped for breath.
But the two at the table took it very quietly. Lucy looked up with eyes more bright than her eyes had ever been before, and a color which was very becoming, which made her almost beautiful; and Sir Thomas (who certainly was a real gentleman, with no pride about him) comforted them with friendly looks, without the slightest appearance of being ashamed of himself. “Yes,” he said. “We both think it will answer so far as we are concerned. You are her oldest friends. Will you let me marry her, Mrs. Ford?”
The question was answered in a way nobody expected. There raised itself suddenly up to the table a small head supported upon two elbows, rising from no one knew where. “Sir Tom was the one I always wanted,” said little Jock.